TY  - JOUR
A1  - Hoffmann, Stefan A.
A1  - Hao, Nan
A1  - Shearwin, Keith E.
A1  - Arndt, Katja Maren
T1  - Characterizing transcriptional interference between converging genes in bacteria
JF  - ACS synthetic biology
N2  - Antisense transcription is common in naturally occurring genomes and is increasingly being used in synthetic genetic circuitry as a tool for gene expression control. Mutual influence on the expression of convergent genes can be mediated by antisense RNA effects and by transcriptional interference (TI). We aimed to quantitatively characterize long-range TI between convergent genes with untranslated intergenic spacers of increasing length. After controlling for antisense RNA-mediated effects, which contributed about half of the observed total expression inhibition, the TI effect was modeled. To achieve model convergence, RNA polymerase processivity and collision resistance were assumed to be modulated by ribosome trailing. The spontaneous transcription termination rate in regions of untranslated DNA was experimentally determined. Our modeling suggests that an elongating RNA polymerase with a trailing ribosome is about 13 times more likely to resume transcription than an opposing RNA polymerase without a trailing ribosome, upon head-on collision of the two.
KW  - gene regulation
KW  - antisense transcription
KW  - transcriptional interference
KW  - mathematical modeling
KW  - Escherichia coli
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.8b00477
SN  - 2161-5063
VL  - 8
IS  - 3
SP  - 466
EP  - 473
PB  - American Chemical Society
CY  - Washington
ER  -